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http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/44708.htm

'DIRTY BOMBER' HUNT

By NILES LATHEM

January 10, 2004 -- EXCLUSIVE

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a worldwide manhunt for al Qaeda's master bombmaker, who may be building a "dirty" bomb and other new devices for terror attacks inside the United States, sources said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials told The Post it was new information about the activities of Egyptian-born bomb maker Midhat Mursi, in part, that led the Bush administration to secretly dispatch Department of Energy radiological detection teams to New York and four other cities over New Year's Eve.

Before the Bush administration decided to raise the nationwide alert level to Code Orange, an al Qaeda informant had said that Mursi, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Khabab, was active again, intelligence officials told The Post.

Intelligence officials said Mursi is a chemical engineer who was head of al Qaeda's weapons-of-mass-destruction committee and reported directly to al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

He is believed to have gone underground before or during the 2001 Afghanistan war and is considered the most wanted al Qaeda figure after Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Before the Afghan war, Mursi operated crude laboratories at an al Qaeda complex near Jalalabad, where satellite imagery showed scores of dead animals outside, victims of ghoulish experiments with anthrax and other biological and chemical poisons, U.S. officials said.

Sources said documents found at the camp and at al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan and Pakistan also included what one intelligence official called "very innovative designs for explosive devices" - some designed to be carried aboard airplanes without being detected.

Some documents indicated Mursi was exchanging information with Palestinian and Hezbollah bomb makers - including some who helped design the shoe bomb carried aboard a Paris-to-Boston flight by Richard Reid in 2001, sources said.

Well, that just about does it, don't it? Now we know who and some of the what's, they are looking for.

Wonder how the extreme weather temps in NYC would effect anykind of WMD?

Adding on to post no. 8948...
LINKS OF INTEREST:

INTERNET HAGANAH (NY POST.com): "'DIRTY BOMBER' HUNT New York Post Exclusive" (January 10, 2004) (Read More...)

GOOGLE Search Term: "ABU KHABAB" (Read More...)

GOOGLE Search Term: "MIDHAT MURSI" (Read More...)

Terror threat level still "high" at eight US airports
Sat Jan 10, 6:49 AM ET Add Top Stories - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is keeping eight airports and other unspecified facilities on high alert for terrorist attack, after lowering the general threat level to "elevated" from "high".

Announcing the lowering of the threat level Friday, after 19 days of intense nationwide security precautions, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that the United States would however "maintain particular vigilance around some critical resources and locales," The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Without giving details he said most of the increased security would involve "the private sector" and this included airlines.

Sources told the paper those facilities included eight airports, including those in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The move signals a major departure in US strategy on internal security, in which officials "communicate quietly with local officials who need to ramp up security in specific areas" rather than issue costly blanket alerts encompassing the entire country, the Post noted.

The change reflects narrower, more "sophisticated" risk assessments concerning specific facilities, locations and types of infrastructure, homeland security sources said.

During the past nearly three weeks, numerous flights to the United States cancelled and many others delayed and even escorted to US airports by fighter jets.

The United States introduced a five-level, colour-coded alert system after the September 11, 2001 attacks. "Elevated", or yellow, is the third highest level.